Forgive the Canadians for being tetchy about their national identity. Too often they are unfairly regarded as Americans with odd accents and an affinity for either the British monarchy or things French. Unwarranted though this characterization is, this history of Canadian Press (CP), the country's principal news association throughout the twentieth century, reinforces the stereotype.

If, as Gene Allen argues, CP assisted in the creation of a Canadian national identity, an irrepressible snigger escapes on discovering that the American Associated Press (AP) imperialistically imposed its model of organization on Canadian publishers. For much of the twentieth century, CP was little more than a holding company for the exclusive rights to republish the AP's news reports in Canada. The Canadian association had few correspondents of its own outside Ontario. Instead, it relied on its member newspapers for domestic news. Nearly all of CP's international news came from the AP, which appears to have regarded CP as a poor relation. If Canadian newspaper readers thought reliance on the Americans downplayed the “Canadian view” of current events, CP could ill afford to dispatch correspondents of its own. To offset accusations of American bias, CP typically bought more news from Reuters, the British news agency. When the Quebecois shouted scandale, CP increased its order of news from Agence France Presse (AFP). CP ordered its news à la carte. If the association helped to create a Canadian sense of “imagined community,” it is remarkable how successfully it outsourced this function.

It made practical sense for CP to outsource the gathering of international news to other news associations and agencies. Outsourcing reduced costs, which presumably helped to avoid, or at least curtail, conflicts among Canadian publishers. Still, CP did suffer the same coordination problems as its American forebear. Big-city papers, which made little use of the news reports, resented overpaying to subsidize small-town papers, which relied heavily on the association's news reports and used them to repulse encroaching big-city papers. Publishers argued about how the news reports were to be allotted between morning and evening newspapers. Radio likewise was a source of agitation. Although newspapers supplied their news to the association and paid for its collection, broadcasting threatened to undermine their control over the news reports.

But outsourcing the gathering of international news, and keeping costs relatively low, meant coordination difficulties were seemingly less divisive and certainly less litigious than in the United States. American regulators accused the AP of unfairly restricting trade by excluding certain newspapers from membership. The AP's members denounced the association for favoring certain sectors of the newspaper population over others. In Canada, regulators tolerated CP's monopoly. Although CP occasionally worried about being forced to accept all newspapers to membership, never was it found in violation of antitrust statutes, as the AP was. To admit excluded papers to membership, CP relaxed its exclusionary bylaws. Members of CP, such as the newspaper publishers of Toronto, although occasionally unwilling to pay the extra cost of newsgathering, were pacified, perhaps partly because CP membership was good value. If this analysis is right, it is evidence the global news agency market, although oligopolistic and cartelized, could meet diverse national demands.

Oligopoly in the supply of news may be desirable, but postcolonial cultural affinities may also explain CP's allegiances to Reuters and AFP, and CP's ability to outsource its international newsgathering so effectively was largely a happy consequence of geography. CP could always count on an inexpensive service of world news from the AP, whose members paid the high cost to transmit the large international news service to North America. It was simple and inexpensive to send the news service northward from New York, so Reuters could not undercut the AP. As the price of transatlantic communication declined, CP varied its offerings with expensive reports from Britain and France. The Australians, Indians, and South Africans were less fortunate. In the absence of viable alternatives, the newspapers in these former colonies and dominions were obliged either to rely heavily on Reuters or to increase their negotiating power by constructing powerful domestic news organizations of their own. Canadian Press never confronted this difficulty, and perhaps that left Canadian newspapers, if not CP itself, with enough resources to develop a national identity.

This book tells the history of an association of tertiary importance in the global hierarchy of news providers, whereas most books on the subject focus on American, British, French, and German examples. It therefore contains information useful to historians whose interests lie beyond Canada. An unhelpful chronological narrative obscures the noteworthy items. The book's first six chapters are ostensibly devoted to telling the organizational history of CP, but the theme of national identity is too nebulous to support such a technical subject. The penultimate chapter analyzes the content of some of CP's news reports. It does not connect the idea of CP as a “national organization” with the creation of a Canadian national identity.